‘Beethoven’s Triple’ kicks off New Haven Symphony Orchestra’s new season

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Get yourself within walking distance of Woolsey Hall early Thursday evening if you plan to be in the audience for opening night of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra’s season, entitled “Beethoven’s Triple.” It’s not only the debut of the B-U-C Trio — the season’s artists-in-residence — but it’s School Night and more than 1,000 youths and parents have signed up for free tickets.

The 7:30 p.m. concert in storied Woolsey (with its spartan wood seats) kicks off an intriguing season for fans of variety that will see a new venue sampled (Lyman Center for the Performing Arts at Southern Connecticut State University) and three guest conductors vying to replace esteemed music director and conductor William Boughton.

“Beethoven’s Triple” refers to the great composer’s “Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano,” of course, to be performed by the trio of “rising stars” Michael Brown (a previous NHSO guest soloist), Elena Urioste and Nicholas Canellakis. They perform together in the briskly arranged opener and then come back individually for concertos during the season.

While Boughton steps aside for the three guest concerts from February through April in his penultimate season, he does plan to conduct a pops concert — “Guys and Dolls in Concert” at Lyman, Hamden and Shelton in late October. He’ll also lead “Beethoven’s Ninth” on Nov. 9, appropriately, and a Bartok-Rachmaninoff concert in May.

For the opener, which understandably will shed a lot of its younger crowd after intermission because it’s a school night, the orchestra will also perform “Britten: Four Sea Interludes from ‘Peter Grimes,’” “Gabrielli: Sonata pian e forte,” “Walker: Lyric for Strings,” and “Marquez: Mexican Danzon No. 2.”

On the first, says Boughton in a phone chat: “It’s four depictions of the sea in different moods; Britten wrote them as out-interludes for scene changes in the opera ‘Peter Grimes.’ But it really depicts the sea in different times of the day and night and in different moods. It ends with the storm.”

The opening piece is by Gabrielli, who was the organist at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice, Boughton said. “He wrote a lot of these brass pieces where brass players were stationed and playing from different parts of St. Mark’s Cathedral (for special ceremonies). So we will have brass players at the top of Woolsey Hall, playing from different sides. The audience will be sitting in the middle of this sound world.”

The George Walker piece, from the African-American Pulitzer Prize winner, is one of his typically “heartfelt works,” says Boughton, for strings. And the Marquez dance piece, says Boughton, “is such a wonderfully vivid portrayal of dance in Mexico. ... It’s probably more popularly known as one of the main theme tunes of ‘Mozart in the Jungle’ (from Amazon Studios).”

On the variety, British-raised Boughton says, “I always try to do something that’s a little different. It’s like a chef, conjuring up a five-course meal. ... You don’t want to have a hot soup followed by a cottage pie, then a heavy pudding, a Black Forest gateau or something, and come away feeling bloated and fat and awful.”

(This is why it’s important to listen to conductors, we would note; to have the musical menu explained in terms of food.)

Boughton calls pianist Brown an “extraordinary musician, one of those collaborators that you always feel you’re making music together in a very spontaneous way in the concert.”

As for the guest conductors, Boughton says, “It’s like any new leader, isn’t it? Whether it’s the president or music director of an orchestra or the managing director of a company. One’s looking at that person and thinking ‘Are they able to lead the orchestra into the future?’ ... So it creates an excitement within itself.”

Joe Amarante is arts and entertainment editor at the New Haven Register. @Joeammo on Twitter.